Save Article

On Our Radar: The Agony and Ecstasy of Employee #1

By

Anita Hofschneider

Aug 15, 2013 10:27 am ET

Is Silicon Valley missing out on talent because of soaring university costs? The Wall Street Journal reports that high student loan debt is preventing some recent grads from pursuing startups. –Anita Hofschneider

Email eating up your time at the office? The co-founder of Flickr thinks he can help. Quartz reports on Stewart Butterfield’s new venture, Slack, an amalgamation of group chat, direct messaging and file sharing. Butterfield thinks that in a decade, email in the workplace will have gone the way of the signed-and-stamped letter. — Rachel Feintzeig

Do you suffer from withdrawal after binging… on work? If so, then you may qualify as a workaholic, according to one definition of the fuzzy — but for many, all too real — condition. There’s still no single medical definition of workaholism, according to the Atlantic, but its effects include high levels of anxiety, weight gain and depression. — Lauren Weber

The Journal recently examined the state of middle management and found that managers’ ranks are growing as a percentage of the workforce, and they’re pretty well-paid to boot, with median wages of around $90,000. But the last few days have seen some bad news for this group, with the WSJ reporting layoffs of middle managers at Cisco SystemsInc. and H.J. Heinz Co. — Lauren Weber

And finally…

Oh, to be Employee #1: This WSJ story checks in with some of the first hires of startups-turned-behemoths like Google Inc. and Amazon.com, to find out where they are now. –Nikki Waller